Who says dance-offs only happens in the movies?
Seems the K-pop star Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video, which has garnered nearly 300 million views on YouTube and even has Today Show reporters trying not to dance like idiots, inspired two Bangkok gangs in Thailand to have a dance-off before they started shooting at each other.
Thai media reported two rival gangs were eating in the same restaurant, and “the younger members of both groups danced provocatively at each other in the manner of top hit Gangnam Style.”
Kids aren’t just dancing in Thailand, though — it’s a violent place. Students in high schools and vo-tech colleges defend their schools’ honor not through sports or bizarre Gangnam Style dancing, but with knives, machetes, homemade grenades and firearms. Bangkok police between January and July reported more than 1,000 cases of violent student rivalries, according to recent statistics, and numerous students have been killed or injured since the Thai schools started classes in May.
Pop star Psy, also known as Park Jae-Sang, said his bizarrely entertaining dance style is based on “riding an invisible horse in your lower body.”
The oh-so-catchy and funny video shows the somewhat portly singer doing his dance all over Seoul, South Korea, with everyone from nuns and boxers to geishas. All the while, he is shown in different 1970’s-ish tuxedos — the whole video is just an eyeful of awful but very addictive all at once.
“This is the point of the Gangnam Style. Dress classy and dance cheesy.”
The song mocks the affluent Seoul suburb of Gangnam, and Park has taught the horse-riding dance to the Today Show crew and Britney Spears, and it’s even spawned a flash-mob wedding proposal.
Los Angeles bodyguards, after a parody video of the song, got fired for their efforts. And Park himself has signed a record deal with the same folks who manage Justin Bieber.